A couple of weeks ago I received an email from the BBC History Magazine website asking me if I’d be willing to draw up a quiz for their Medieval Week. The brief was to come up with ten multiple-choice questions about the Middle Ages, relating to political, social, economic and cultural history. I said yes […]
Every year, on the Sunday before 5 October, the feast day of St Froilán, the inhabitants of the Spanish city of León celebrate a popular festival known as Las Cantaderas. The fiesta, which has been in existence for almost 500 years, commemorates the decision supposedly taken in the late eighth century by the Christian kings […]
Of the many celebrated names connected with medieval Exeter, Bracton is one of only a handful to claim global recognition. Bracton is known to students and practitioners of law throughout the Anglophone world as a founding father of English Common Law and the assumed author of an invaluable compendium ‘On the Laws and Customs of England’. While he is widely […]
Books of Hours are perhaps the most familiar of all medieval manuscripts. Their intricate miniatures have become a universal symbol of European art and culture before the advent of the printing press – and the stock-in-trade for every producer of ‘traditional’ Christmas cards. They were the first books to be mass-produced: commercial workshops, centered on […]